A Journal of My Mid-Life Crisis

14 December 1997 - archy the cockroach discusses design reviews and genetic algorithms

with apologies to Don Marquis

well boss
i would
fear greatly for the sanity of miriam the engineer
if she had any
these design reviews she goes to
are too boring
and who knows what she might do
to get some excitement

she talks of going to antarctica
and i fear it will be
like when mehitabel went to paris
and we thought we would
never get her to stay home again
miriam says it is just a short cruise
but what if the ice gets in her soul?

boss, i think
miriam's discontent is not so much because of
design reviews
it comes of reading conference papers
the thought of using genetic algorithms to write music
mozart reduced to 8 bit chromosomes per measure
genius as a roll of the dice
and worst of all she says
part of her wishes she had
written the paper herself
though she would rather go to
antarctica than aspen

Okay, now you know just how weird I am. How did Don Marquis manage to churn out column after column of archy and mehitabel? I love his stuff, but I obviously can't write that sort of thing well at all. I suppose this is a lesson at why one should keep to one's own voice while writing.

So, yes, I was up in Sunnyvale at a design review and, yes, it was incredibly boring except for the demos, some of which were cool and some of which were silly but entertaining commercials.

And, yes, amongst the conference papers I reviewed Monday night was one on genetic algorithms which included music composition as an example of an innovative application. The other example amused me more, actually, because it had to do with an entirely obscure subject that I know much more about than I have any right to - namely, solitons. Solitons are nonlinear waves that behave in rather complex ways when they interact. I did the usual engineering Ph.D. minor in applied math, but in an unusual manner since I had taken the normal sort of advanced engineering math classes as an undergrad and didn't feel a need to sit through complex analysis and special functions all over again. So I took a series that I like to refer to as "topics in applied math that the professor feels like lecturing about today." Depending on the professor's mood that could be a review of complex analysis or a lecture on the spherical theta function or, rarely, something out of the nominal text book on Green's functions and distributions. One entire quarter was dedicated to soliton theory, dedicated meaning at least one lecture a week actually followed that textbook. In the intervening dozen or so years, I have had no reason to ever think of solitons or the Kortweg-deVries equation which governs their behavior, so I was pretty amused to see them come up in a paper that was nominally about optimization theory. (Which is something that I actually use but was apparently one of the rare topics in applied math that the professor couldn't care less about.)

Since Robert was also up in the Bay Area (at a conference) I got to spend an evening with him. He's now heard far more than he ever wanted to of my opinions about trendy optimization algorithms. It is amazing what chemistry can allow people to put up with. After more than 12 years and seeing him as infrequently as I do, you'd think the sparks wouldn't fly quite so intensely. Which is both good and bad, since there's still the fundamental problem of his apparent unfamiliarity with the entire concept of monogamy.

Given how many people I know up in the Bay Area, it is startling that I managed to get together with absolutely none of them. I really had just one free evening (no point in going out with friends when you're a zombie from having taken a 6:40 a.m. flight, and I had made my plans with Robert earlier). I did call Elliot and Ramona but they had her office party to go to. And I never got beyond playing phone tag with Greg. And I didn't have anyone else's phone numbers handy. So I ended up having dinner with various of my colleagues. One night at Pasand, where we discovered that there are quite a few people who don't like Indian food. The food there is fine but the service keeps going further downhill. The other night Milo talked a bunch of us into going to a place he found by searching the web for vegetarian restaurants in Sunnyvale. It turned out that Country Gourmet is merely vegetarian friendly and just a general natural foods sort of place. It was decent enough and I supposed I'd be willing to go back, but I wouldn't go out of my way to go there.

Coming home was particularly chaotic as Reno Air's computer system failed and they had to check everyone in manually. They used stickers with seat numbers and, first, put stickers on everyone's ticket who had a preprinted seat number. Since I had changed flights (and, in fact, had tried to get standby on an earlier one) I had to wait and hope they'd actually give me a seat. It all worked out fine but was still especially chaotic. I guess this just wasn't my week for smooth travel. I'd had a stressful bit of fedexing tickets back and forth for the Antarctica trip due to a change not having been made correctly the first time around. I do have what should be the correct tickets now, but I worried about the whole thing more than I should have. (This is all traced back to what happened when Aerolineas Argentinas pulled out of LAX. It turned out that the Miami to Buenos Aires flight was full, but Marine Expeditions gave me a ticket on it anyway, instead of the New York to B.A. flight we were really protected on. I am trying to tell myself this will be better, since it means I get to B.A. about an hour and a half earlier. I will still worry until I am actually on the plane, though.)

Speaking of which, I now have everything I absolutely need for the cruise, but I may yet run down to R.E.I. again and buy a few more things. More socks, maybe, and goretex gaiters and another polartec sweater or that lovely Patagonia "synchilla" sweater I liked the last time. (Amazing stuff these fleece fabrics - made out of recycled soda bottles!) While I was shopping for gloves and sock liners and such, I also bought Christmas cards but failed to find a suitable housewarming present for Brian. (Not that I've gotten housewarming presents yet for Marcia and Jim or for Lonnie and Lauren. And it is increasingly questionable whether I will finish Elliot and Ramona's gift - handmade with love and procrastination - before they pay off the mortgage.) Sigh. I used to like shopping back when I never actually needed to buy anything.

At least I don't have time to get bored!